Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

I remember as a kid going to St. Armand’s Key near Sarasota. We would eat at the Columbia Restaurant and I would always ask Mom and Dad if we could go to the clock store.

I don’t know if that store is still there, but it had every clock imaginable – big, small, fancy, cheap, simple and bizarre. The gears always fascinated me – lots of different gears of different sizes, connected in a rhythmic, staccato movement.

Clocks are complicated. So are political issues.

Gun violence, our economic system, foreign policy. These are clocks with countless gears, working together in ways we understand and in other ways that we don’t.

Changing the circumference or placement of one gear affects other gears. Sometimes, gears we don’t even control impact the ones we do.

But the world of political conversation and discourse seems to be, increasingly, a “one-gear” place, doesn’t it?

Been thinking about that a lot lately – mulling those gears and other stuff like Facebook memes and guns and ideology and how we communicate.

Guess what – government is horribly wasteful and inefficient and plagued by corruption AND it does amazing things to help the “least of these” in our community and nation.

Those Planned Parenthood videos were dreadfully disgusting AND the organization does amazing things to help women.

There are so many guns in this country that any attempt at controlling supply is futile AND there must be ways to at least increase the level of responsibility and regulation of those who own guns.

It’s an OR world out there with a bunch of AND realities.

When it comes to gun violence, the number of complexities is staggering. Gun control is merely one gear. Oregon and Charleston and Sandy Hook also have roots in some or all of the following issues: local, state and federal mental health policies; the breakdown of the American family; a culture of violence in the entertainment industry; the role of religion in our society; the role of community in our society; bullying and hatred; racism; poverty; economic stagnation. And how many more can you name?

This is a complex timepiece with many gears. And posting a snarky meme on Facebook is supposed to solve the problem? That’s like fixing a watch by throwing it on the ground.

The benefits of social media far outweigh the downsides, but there are downsides. I worry about the meme-ing of America.

If you don’t know what a meme is, here are two, on both sides of the gun issue:

Wonka meme 1(Photo: imgflip.com)

Wonka meme 2(Photo: imgflip.com)

Memes are sometimes clever, usually snarky and almost always oversimplified. They often feature “celebrities” or pop culture figures like Willy Wonka above.

You can find a meme to support almost any position you want to take. That is, you can find “facts” to support almost any position you want to take.

I see on my Facebook timeline people whose very identity is their ideology. They soak up the information that fits their view and ignore the information that doesn’t.

These aren’t stupid people, by the way. I can easily pick out two highly intelligent, highly successful, well-respected Facebook friends who saw the Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearing as both a withering indictment of her integrity and veracity, and a withering indictment of the unfair witch hunt conducted by Congressional Republicans.

This social media “knee-jerkedness” is ratcheted up during times of crisis – particularly crises that touch an ideological nerve.

While there are certainly a fair number of constructive debates, far too many postings are designed to draw few-word comments like “shameful,” “disgusting” or “how do they sleep at night?”

The memes and the charts and graphs purport to “end the debate” on a certain issue or show how one foe’s position was “crushed” by another.

My least favorite are the ones that compare the U.S. to other countries. I’ve seen gun violence charts that show a direct relationship between foreign gun ownership and higher rates of violence as well as lower rates of violence. I’ve seen well-sourced research that shows exactly opposite results for: the minimum wage, taxes and many more.

Some “facts” are debatable; others are just false. The problem is, Internet ideologues simply assume or believe that all the facts they run across are controlling and it’s the “other guys” who play fast and loose with the truth.

But the real truth is, most of us – including me – are guilty of being purveyors of faux information. Social media users are constant victims of millions of “mini information scams,” none of which amounts to much alone, but the aggregation of which are a mountain than reaches into the heavens.

A big problem with all of this: As facts lose value, emotion becomes the new currency of the political economy. “We have to do something” is this movement’s battle cry.

Those are dangerous words. In foreign policy, “doing something” leads to war. In social policy, “doing something” leads to a threat to civil liberties. And in fiscal policy, “doing something” leads to unnecessary regulation and a growing bureaucracy.

Which brings me back to gun violence.

Here’s what I wish a politician would say: “First of all, we’re not going to do something easy and cheap and we’re not going to do nothing. Attacking the issue of gun violence involves a decades-long cohesive strategy. It must involve public sector action, private sector action, and vital work by churches, nonprofits, neighborhoods and other groups. Given the huge supply of guns in this country, we must do precise research on what specific measures stand the best chance to reducing gun violence. We must conduct a full analysis of our criminal justice system to evaluate how to most effectively promote safety and justice in our communities. The same must be done for our mental health systems and more. We call on our nation’s faith community to make ending violence a priority.”

And that would just be the start of a long national discussion.

Discussion – that’s a cute, quaint word. Remember discussions?

Now we shout and duck.

The current state of communication today feels to me like it’s more about winning than anything. Now, I’m probably the last person to go for the “don’t keep score” youth sports mentality. I think competition breeds higher performance and that keeping score matters.

But it feels like our society is more win-at-all-cost than ever. If you are a supporter of one candidate, shortcomings and errors are merely tackling dummies through which you need to plow, with head down, eyes and ears closed. And the enemy? He or she must be demonized, ridiculed, torn down. There can be no genuine disagreements. The other side’s views are “shameful.”

No, it can’t be that somebody honestly reached a different conclusion; it has to be more nefarious than that. They must be corrupt. “Evil” is how one local person described an entire wing of the government.

Now, I’m not naïve. I know there is corruption and evil in the world. But I also think there is room to oppose the minimum wage or support abortion rights or oppose gun control and still be a good-hearted, intelligent person.

So, as you can see, the gears in my own head are a bit haywire. But I do know two things: First, nothing is as simple as a meme. And second, if everything you run across fits neatly into your world view, you probably need to expand your zone of information.